Searching through databases is becoming more complex as storage capacity is increased and more information can be stored. With databases that contain large amounts of information, particularly about people, the amount of retrievable names can be significant. Furthermore, many people have variations on names, particularly in affixes, that make their names difficult to search. Many people also have similar names or similar surnames. Searching for a common name may lead to a large processing time. In addition, a result list returned to a user may be too large, may not contain variations of certain parts of names, may contain redundant names, or may be inaccurate. The large amount of information in a person's name, and the various parts to a person's name, are currently not utilized in helping to narrow the field of search for a name. At the same time, requiring a user to input parts of a person's name into separate search fields respectively corresponding to those parts may be confusing to a user and requires more time than entering the complete name in a single field. There is also a possibility of human error if part of a name is placed in the wrong field. Thus, a method is needed to increase the number of variables that is searchable without increasing the complexity of the user input.